Sunburnt Australia to pull plug on sunbed tans: Australia is known as the sunburnt country, where beaches are th...

SYDNEY - Jay Allen used to love having what he thought was a healthy tan – so much so that he would regularly expose his body to the lights of a sunbed to ensure he maintained his overall colour. But after one session he noticed a small mole on his ankle was bleeding and at his wife’s insistence, he went to the doctor. He was told he had a skin cancer which could kill him if he didn’t have it removed. “I thought it was a good thing,” he said of using a solarium. “I thought it was going to be safer in the sunbed than laying out in the sun for an hour. It turns out it nearly cost me my life.” Australia is known as the sunburnt country, where beaches are thronged with bathers basking in the sun and the rates of melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer, are the highest in the world. For decades public health campaigns have urged people to wear sunscreen, hats and sung...